On Foot in San Diego: Rancho Santa Maria de los Pensquitos

My project to locate and walk the thirty San Diego ranchos listed in my Ranchos of San Diego County book is moving slowly. My friend, Pat, said she was tired of opening up the blog and seeing Kathy and Louis’ garden, so it’s time to get some writing done again.

I have walked Rancho Santa Maria de los Penasquitos just a couple miles south of my house many times since coming to San Diego, but I had to check it out again this week after the Union Tribune reported the Easter Sunday earthquake caused the artesian well to more than double its output. More on that later.

The canyon preserve is an idyllic six mile walk end to end through one of the largest urban parks in the US, about 4000 acres in all.


I have walked here with coyotes in early morning, watched the hawks on the hillside, given wide berth to snakes. When I first started walking the canyon twenty years ago, I could feel completely away from civilization. These days housing developments have been allowed on the ridge line.


A stream flows east to west across the canyon, crossing midway through rock cliffs (Penasquitos means "little cliffs") with a substantial waterfall in springtime.


I wasn't able to climb around for a picture of the falls, but there were other points of interest in my viewfinder.


You're walking a lot of history across this beautiful little canyon. The eastern part of the canyon was part of the first San Diego land grant, made by the governor of Mexico to the comandante of the Presidio, Captain Francisco Maria Ruiz, in 1823, one league in all (4439 acres), now the burg of Rancho Penasquitos. Before the Captain's grant, the land was used by the Mission padres for sheepfarming and orchards, and before them by Kumeyaay Indians going back 7000 years. Captain Ruiz asked for additional land and in 1834 he was given another league that extends westward almost to the I-5 and is most of our canyon.

The Captain was already in his 60's when he got this original land grant. He had a house in Old Town near the Presidio, but built a one room adobe house on the eastern end of the preserve for his visits to the ranch. When he died in 1839, the bachelor Captain passed the rancho to his grandnephew, Francisco Maria Alvarado, who lived both in Old Town and at the rancho with his family.

Francisco gave all his land to his son, Diego, who took over ranch operations in 1857 and built his house and ranch buildings at the western end of the canyon. Some ruins still stand but are enclosed by chain link making a good photo impossible. When I can resurrect one of my photos of the ruins from 20 years ago I will post as an addendum.

Francisco's beautiful daughter and Diego's sister, Estafana, married George Alonzo Johnson, a gringo from New York City. Read here for a fascinating personal account of Mr. Johnson's adventures before he met Estafana. After marrying Estafana, the couple bought property from Diego in the eastern end of the canyon to build their adobe, a wonderful house with veranda facing west across the canyon. What a view! Too bad the inheritance practices in those days gave all the land to the male heir, and Estafana had to buy her father's land back from Diego.

Three walls of the original adobe were incorporated into the new house, and the Johnson-Alvarado is the one standing today.


The front porch,


and back veranda facing the sunset.


Other history lives here in the canyon. The main road from Old Town San Diego to Yuma went through the canyon in the early to mid-1800's. In mid-December 1846 the 300 Army of the West soldiers surviving the Battle of San Pasqual were led through the canyon by General Kearny on their way to San Diego. Our guy, Mr. Johnson, fell on some hard financial times and the canyon was bought in 1880 by Colonel Jacob Shell Taylor, founder of Del Mar, who was going to sell it as subdivisions for development! Lucky for us, the bust of the late 1880's when the transcontinental rail failed to materialize for San Diego squashed that plan and the canyon continued as a working ranch for many decades, as late as the 1960's.

Back to the reason for this week's trek to the canyon, the artesian well just to the side of the Johnson-Alvarado adobe, inside this shelter.


The day after the Mexacali earthquake last month, water volume doubled from the well, likely from new fractures in the rock mass just below the ground.


A few more earthquakes like that and I could have my own personal hot springs right here in Del Mar.

On Foot in San Diego: Louie and Kathi's Hidden Garden

Ocean Beach is a great place to take out of town guests, and last weekend with Jennifer and grandbaby Isabella visiting we all went down to check out the pier, Hodad's, and a spot I heard about on Noah Tofolla's KPBS Wonderland show - Louie and Kathi's Hidden Garden.

Louie and Kathi Williams bought this little place a few years ago, leveled the front and back yards and created gardens to rival those of Majorelle and the Encinitas Meditation Gardens. Where Jardin Majorelle has the elegance and sophistication of Yves St. Laurent and the Meditation gardens the serenity of the yogi, the Hidden Gardens are like comfort food. The xeriscaped front yard is whimsical and just a taste of what is to come.




So tempting for little fingers -


A sign directs visitors down a walk to the back yard,


to the Hidden Garden and a whole world of botanical and antiquey things opens up. Be prepared for a "wow!" moment.


This private garden is open and free to the public, although I did spot a little pot tucked into the garden where visitors were leaving donations.

There are little spots to sit and relax. The glass in the windows hung on the fence have been replaced with mirrors. Where do these guys get these ideas?


A second house sits in the back yard, hung with old things - Louie is a retired antiques dealer - and I think this is where Louie and Kathi live, and that a tenant lives in the front blue house. I imagined they get to peer out their windows and watch the visitors' delight.


A fantastical windmill, and the back of a garage has been hung with a faux door, window, house number and mailbox making it look like another little cottage.


Jennifer checked out a pretty healthy tomato plant. Mine are still sitting in their pots from the nursery.


More great stuff down this side yard,


artwork on the walls that reminds me of what Patty does inside her house. You never know what you'll find hanging on her walls when you visit, chairs, old dresses, even a tie from a young Turkish guy in Istanbul who closed up his rug shop and took us out for a night on the town. Don't ask how she got the tie, that's a story for another time. Yesterday she was painting the hanging light fixtures. Some brains are just different from the rest of us.


Fanciful surprises are tucked into the landscape.




a wee bird's nest resting on top of driftwood,



buried pots and pitchforks as art.


and my favorite, this metal bed and praying child.


Thank you Louie and Kathi for creating and sharing your Hidden Garden.


I'll be back. Now off to spiff up my own yard with new inspiration.

Dry Docked in La Jolla

I spotted these boats tumbling off the roof of the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla this weekend. Isn't art great?


I'll have to check out the exhibits when I don't have along a 7 year old more interested in getting down to the ocean to see the seals, especially as I understand the building has a connection to an Irving Gill house built on the location in 1916.

At the same time, I'm going to have to check out why this mural on the adjoining building.


Looks like another outing coming up.

Who Needs Seasons?

One weekend you can be lost in the mountains of the Laguna,


the next walking the shore of La Jolla with seals in camouflage.

On Foot in San Diego: Secret Canyon Revisited or What a Difference a Day Makes

Five of the "six missing hikers" returned this weekend to Secret Canyon, entering from the end of the 16 mile hike we were unable to complete after becoming boxed in a canyon by rain swollen creeks. We were curious, all except our kick boxer Wayne who felt he didn't need this corrective emotional experience and opted to a game of tennis. Two of our rescuers, Chris and Jessie, sister and daughter of Linda, and Linda's dog, Harley, joined us. They needed a corrective emotional experience of their own after that night of worry and searching.

I won't bore the reader with the beauty of the area,


or the beauty of the sunny day.




We found the spot where we spent the night spooned to conserve body heat as the temperatures dipped into the low thirties soaked by intermittent downpours, straw pallet still on the ground, and hung out for about an hour.


We found the overgrown left fork in the trail that would have taken us above the creek, hidden by a pile of branches and grasses grown up from the recent rains.


We found the "swimming hole" landmark we had been searching for,


and hung out some more.



Chrissy Cekander, one of our black belt karate kicking sheriff rescuers.

As a special treat Kathleen pointed out some native miner's lettuce that kept the nineteenth century gold miners in this area from getting scurvy, a trick they likely learned from the Indians.


A newspaper from the miner's day would had said about this outing "a good time was had by all". All life's traumas should find closure this easily.

On Foot in San Diego: Arrowmaker Ridge

Rancheros introducing themselves in Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981):
Don Diego: Don Diego from San Fernando.
Don Francisco: Don Francisco from San Jose.
Don Fernando: Don Fernando from San Diego.
Don Jose: Don Jose from San Bernardino.
Luis Obispo: Luis Obispo from Bakersfield.

Hiking Rancho Cuyamaca this weekend got me off to a good start for my spring project of locating and exploring the old Mexican ranchos of San Diego, and some good exercise to boot.

Hoping that this first trek since my "six hikers missing" would be uneventful, I joined twelve other hikers from The Gourmet Hiking Club, a group started fifteen years ago by six outdoor and food minded teachers, to hike up to Arrowmaker ridge in the Cuyamaca Mountains in eastern San Diego County. Kathleen and Wayne, two of the other "six missing", have come along for the hike. Kathleen, I'm not surprised - she's a Scot and usually up for any adventure or misadventure, but Wayne was not an experienced hiker before Secret Canyon and I wasn't sure we'd get him back out.

The Cedar fire roared through our hiking area in the very early morning hours of October 26, 2003. By the time it was contained the fire storm had burned 280,278 acres, destroyed 2,820 buildings and killed 15 people, the largest wildfire in California history. Seven years later we were walking the forest's destruction and rejuvenation.

Just off the parking area at trail head was the ruin of the Dyar house, built in the 1920's, burned in the fire and undergoing rejuvenation like the surrounding forest lands.


Rancho Cuyamaca has a checkered history as do many of San Diego's ranchos. The Mexican government began to distribute lands when they took over from the Spanish in 1821, and our rancho here wasn't granted until 1845, just before the Americans took over California in 1848. The Mexican governor, Pio Pico, was giving out land to his friends and family just before the cession of California to the US and gave 36,000 acres to his friend, Agustin Alvarado, who had never set foot in the Cuyamacas. Thing is, there were no maps or established legal boundaries for the grant, a guy he sent out to start a lumber mill to make some money for him got run off by those pesky Indians - the nerve of those Kumeyaay objecting to people coming in to take over their land - and Alvarado had to sell off the rancho piece by piece to pay the lawyer representing his case in US courts. More disputes arose when gold was discovered in 1870 on the north side of Stonewall Mountain. The bottom line is the rancho's ownership was divided and subdivided over the years. The Dyar family bought over 20,000 acres in 1923 and ten years later sold it to the sate of California. Oila, we have this beautiful Cuyamaca Rancho State Park! Lucky for us.

We set off with a clear, cool morning through what would become a familiar sight, dead trees and regrowth,


coming to a meadow cleared for ranching in the old days.


At one end of the meadow stood the "grandfather tree". Mike, the group leader for the day who knew the trail, told the story that when the rancher was clearing the meadow, an Indian elder came to him to ask to have the tree spared as it was significant to the tribe. It was left standing and when the Cedar fire came blazing through, the fire split around it and the tree was left unburned.


We passed dead trees still standing like statues after seven years, a preview of what was to come farther up our walk.


Many stronger trees were surviving with new growth, odd looking with their blackened trunks and limbs.


We scrambled up rock formations,


uphill to a mesa through vast burned out areas that won't recover for another 50 years,


leaving the trail to cross this high meadow, looking for the site of an ancient Kumeyaay village on the ridge.


We moved up the ridge across fallen trees into dense brush,


finally coming to our destination at the outcropping of rocks at the top of the ridge,


where a nice floral tablecloth was spread and each hiker brought out his/her prepared dish for a delicious luncheon. Hence, the name of the club. We had gourmet sandwiches, a cheese log, various desserts, peach Schnapps. I think I could get used to this, forget the trail mix stuff.


Scattered across the rocks were mortar holes for grinding acorns and wild buckwheat, and on the ground myriads of broken pottery shards, remnants of past lives on this outcropping.


I found this tree, nearly back to its old shape but unable to discard the old limbs, like a divorcee and her ex.


Jillian spotted what appeared to be a carved eagle on an upturned root with a tree branch Indian headdress.


The cloud mist had moved in while we ate our lunch, and followed us down the mountain.


A mystical ending to a mystical day on Arrowmaker Ridge.

Burgers and Maps - Two of My Favorite Things!

While we're waiting for Kathie to tell us how her hike went yesterday - I know she's returned because she commented on that last post! - I'll tell you what Kelly and I had for dinner last night and relate it to yet another map. I love maps! Why didn't I become a geographer? Or a cartographer?

Anyway, after washing all of our sheets and blankets and actually getting some work-work done, I stopped by the pet store, Target, and Lowe's on my way to pick up Kelly. She'd had a long day taking care of post-op neurosurgery patients at the hospital where my entire family (of 3) works.

"Whaddya want to eat?" I asked her.

"I don't care," she said and lay back against the carseat to rest.

"Cheezburger?"

"Sure."

We drove to Five Guys to pick up our cheezburgers to take home. In a daze, she ate - probably without tasting - and promptly fell asleep on the couch with one cat on her lap and another propped up against her from the arm of the couch.

So what kind of map can possibly relate to such an exciting evening? I found this on the Floating Sheep blog that is my new love. Check out Texas and Oklahoma - it looks like someone spilled cornflower blue paint there! I mean, Sonic's ok but what the heck?!? And how interesting that Dairy Queen is more predominant in - what is that - Minnesota and Montana? No surprise that Jack in the Box has a hold on southern California...

Speaking of which - Kath, you'd better get back to blogging and give our two readers a rest from all the excitement on this side of the continent.

Just Rambling on a BreeZy Spring Saturday Morning

Last evening, Kelly picked me up from work and we decided to stay home and eat a frozen pizza. (Well, it wasn’t actually frozen when we ate it, but you know what I mean.) It seemed the right thing to do since:

· Number one, I had just committed to almost a thousand dollars of work on my fifteen year old Explorer which Kathie has nicknamed “Queen Mary”. Why do I keep an old SUV? I drive six miles round-trip to work Monday through Friday so the QM's cost in gas really is pretty low for a gas guzzler; I figure $1,000 in car maintenance and repairs a year is inexpensive compared to car payments, and I’ll keep thinking that until the big one hits - $3,500 for that new motor I’ve been putting off buying until the old one blows up.

· Number two, the pizza was cheap at two for the price of one at FoodLion. Palermo’s Primo Thin pepperoni pizza...not horribly bad for frozen.

Rambling on...I promised myself I would get up early this morning and get some work-work done. I did get up early but I’ve frittered away the morning reading some of Blogger’s blogs of note – and washing our bed linens. I guess the morning hasn’t been a total waste, then.

Snacking on cold pizza, I happened to stumble upon this hilarious blogpost and map relating pizza to guns and strip clubs in the US. I love this blog! Do you suppose the bloggers are really as young and cute as their photos?

OK, OK - I'll get my work done now.